DAVID BECKHAM has made some shockingly God-awful decisions in his life - the sarong, the Taxi Driver mohawk, those Becks-inspired Armani cardigans the England squad were forced to wear.

But we can live with them. If he wants to make a plank of himself with the sort of get-up that would embarrass Marilyn Manson, fine. Life's too short to have a coronary over his taste in clothes and haircuts.

We can even live with his all-pervasive influence at the FA where this walking, talking cash cow calls the shots and where Soho Square's commercial suits offer up a silent prayer of thanks every night for his continued presence.

You want England to wear all white because it reminds you of Madrid, David? Not a problem!

You don't like the shade of brown for the official shoes and belts, Becks? We'll get that sorted, don't you worry!

Victoria fancies a few days at Champneys or in Dubai? Hey, let's call it a team-building exercise and write it off against tax!

It's got to the stage where FA flunkeys now refer to Beckham as The Captain, as if to mention him merely by name cannot do justice to his splendour and majesty.

I suspect Beckham can see the irony in it - just as he and Victoria did when they posed on mock thrones at their wedding.

But the line MUST be drawn when The Captain's influence seeps under Sven Goran Eriksson's hotel door like some ghastly spectre, infecting the manager's dreams, planting seeds of doubt in his mind.

Beckham, of course, denies he has Eriksson's ear to the point where tactics and formations are plotted from a Spanish hacienda.

That doesn't quite tally, though, with the reaction of a senior England player when asked what he thought the team for a recent international might be. "Not a clue," came the reply, "Becks hasn't arrived from Spain yet."

It was said with a smile, but the underlying tone was unmistakable.

There were worrying signs in Portugal this week that Eriksson found himself bowing to his captain's demands when Beckham moved into the centre of midfield for the second half in Faro.

Yes, it's where he has been playing for Real so successfully, but there are light years between England's rigid 4-4-2 and the fluid midfield formation that sees the white shirts of Madrid interchange positions telepathically.

In Spain, Beckham is given licence to collect the ball from wherever he sees fit, knowing the pace of the game will give him time to pick his pass against opponents almost constantly back-pedalling. For England, his presence in the centre causes nothing but disruption.

Kieron Dyer can cover on the right, but where does that leave Steven Gerrard? Merely as Beckham's minder, castrating his ability to drive forward? Is that a price Eriksson is willing to pay? And what about Paul Scholes? He'd have to slot in on the left, making him even less likely to break his 24-game goal drought and adding fuel to the whispering campaign against him.

Eriksson, for all his unconvincing protestations to the contrary, has slammed shut the door for Euro 2004 in the faces of Ledley King, Scott Parker, Jermain Jenas and Alan Smith.

Now he must do the same with The Captain's hankering to replicate his Real role ... even if it means putting that delicately chiselled nose out of joint.

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THIS BUNCH OF BANKERS EMERGE WITH NO CREDIT

THROUGH the post this week came an envelope from MBNA Europe Bank Limited.

"Dear Mr McCarthy," it started, "What do we want for Wycombe Wanderers FC? We want a successful season and a good cup run - it's an obvious statement I know, but this is always our key aim."

It then went on to gushingly push a Wycombe Wanderers FC credit card.

Now, I don't know about you, but surely the obvious statement would have been why didn't MBNA think about this at the start of the season when there might have been a chance of success for Wycombe or before they were knocked out of every Cup?

Or at least prior to sacking a manager who had been performing - in the words of the chairman - "minor miracles" and then replacing him with somebody utterly inexperienced who has merely cemented their nose-dive towards Division Three.

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EUR GOING TO BE GA-GA ON THE ALGARVE

A WORD of advice if you're planning a trip to next summer's European Championships ... LEAVE NOW!

Because if Wednesday night is anything to go by, it's going to be chaos. On the morning of the match, I did a recce of the gleaming new Esadiao Algarve and discovered it was an eight-minute journey down a two-lane stretch of motorway up to a series of car parks with room for several thousand cars.

On the night, I allowed two-and-a-quarter hours - and made it into the press room with about 20 minutes to spare after Portuguese police closed off a lane of the motorway and then coned off most of the car parks.

They compounded their act of genius by coning off the road on the way OUT, causing 30-minute queues a full two hours after the final whistle. And all this at a state-of-the-art stadium with extensive communication links and a specifically designed slip-road off the motorway.

It makes you wonder what joys those conceptual masterminds building the new Wembley have in store for the poor punters.

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WORLD'S GONE FLIPPING MAD..

I'VE torn knee ligaments on a school skiing trip. A thick outside edge smashed my nose in the slips. I broke my wrist and was twice knocked unconscious playing football at school.

I'm not particularly accident prone, it was just a fact of life that if you played a lot of sport at school, you ran the risk of injury

My parents never sued. They simply picked me up from hospital and made sure I didn't try and play again too quickly.

But given that a Devon primary school this week cancelled its annual pancake race because the lowest available insurance quote was #280 and they would have needed two dozen uniformed marshalls to line the 80-yard route, how long before the pathetic nanny state and litigant locusts destroy school sports forever?

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SHANE WARNE is recalled to the Test squad and a nation celebrates the return of a man banned for failing a drugs test. Mark Viduka misses a meaningless friendly in Venezuela and is instantly reviled and treated like a criminal. It just goes to prove there is nothing more warped in the world than an Australian who has lost to the English.

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Danny Mills claims he would have been chased out of the game if he'd head-butted Steve McManaman. He reckons there's a moral agenda against him - can't imagine why